The Box Followed
by Aelfay Sparrow
Summary: Donna's granddaughter is followed everywhere by a blue box. Quick oneshot. Wrote this a while ago - the Doctor is the 11th Doctor, as portrayed by Matt Smith.


Everywhere Sam went, the box followed.

When she'd tried telling the adults about it, they'd all gone, oh, how cute, she has an imaginary friend. A little blue box. Why a box? They'd ask her, and she wouldn't be able to tell them, because she hadn't chosen for it to be a box. It just was, and there it was, round the corner as mum drove her to preschool, or outside her window on the lawn if she got up at night to look.

As she got older, they began to discourage her if she talked about the box, telling her that it wasn't proper to mention in company, and eventually, at all. So she shut up about it, not mentioning that it had taken up perching on a certain street corner on her way to primary school.

It wasn't until they'd gone to see Gram that she talked about the box again. She'd never seen Gram before, at least not that she could remember; there'd been some sort of row between her and Da and they hadn't spoken since, though Mum seemed to miss her. But now Gram was sick and so they had to visit, Mum said, because it wasn't long that she'd be around, and so the family packed up and went to Cardiff. Da grumbled the whole way there, wondering why she'd want to live in Cardiff, but Mum said it was just one of Gram's quirks and Da shut up.

They pulled up in front of a little house with a red door, and Da unloaded the things onto the pavement while Mum and Sam went to the front door. Mum knocked, and a voice that was much louder than Sam had expected for a Gram went, "On my way!" in a distinctly cheerful voice, and then the door opened.

Sam was surprised by Gram entirely. She didn't wear her hair in little curls like most old ladies; instead her grey hair reached her shoulders in flowing waves. Her face had many smile lines on it, and her eyes laughed as she looked down at them, for she was quite tall. However there was a sort of vacancy in them that made Sam think of Luna Lovegood, because she had that distinct look of someone who had seen things and lost things that didn't make sense. Definitely the sort that Da wouldn't get along with, with his accounting and numbers straight in a row; but Sam liked her straight off.

"Well, come in!" she said, gesturing, and Mum and Sam came in and stomped their damp shoes on the rug, and Mum hugged Gram. Sam could hear Gram murmur, "It's good to see you, dear," and Mum said, "You too," and then the attention was on Sam.

"Hi," she said awkwardly, proffering a hand. "Nice to meet you."

Gram looked a little taken aback by the hand, and Sam worried that she'd made a mistake, but she didn't know if she should hug this stranger she was related to. But then Gram smiled, and her eyes understood and she shook the hand, saying, "It's nice to meet you too, Samantha. Though I've met you before, but you were much smaller then, without much personality yet."

Then there was a bang of a suitcase on the door and Mum opened it for Da, whose hands were full of suitcases. He was huffing out of breath from lugging them up the walk and the stairs. He didn't bother with pleasantries, instead going straight to a room down the hall and setting down the cases before coming out and offering a hand to Gram. "Good to see you," he said stiffly, but not unkindly, and Gram nodded as she took the hand. "Robert. Do come and get warm. Cardiff is chilly these days."

As they followed Gram to the kitchen, Sam tugged at Mum's sleeve and whispered, "She doesn't look ill."

"It's her head. She's fine on some days, but sometimes it hurts. So she'll probably need to go into a home soon," Mum said quietly.

"Probably," Gram said ahead of them, and Mum looked up, blushing like a child who'd been caught sneaking cookies. Sam wanted to laugh at her embarrassed face. Gram turned and looked at Mum, saying kindly, "I know I'm sick, dear. And a home will be all right, just so long as they let me cook sometimes. I'll meet new people." She met Sam's eyes, and Sam saw a twinkle in them that made her smile.

Da and Mum went to bed early. They seemed tired from the drive. Sam, on the other hand, was wide awake, and Gram convinced her parents that she could stay up until Gram went to bed.

Sam was reasonably satisfied with this idea, and she perused the shelves of Gram's living room before curling up on the couch next to Gram's desk with _The Return of Sherlock Holmes_.

After a bit she got restless. She'd already read the book and knew how all the mysteries ended. So it wasn't long before she was skipping entire pages, and then she happened to look up and see what Gram was doing.

She'd been at her desk, so Sam had assumed that she was doing some boring grown-up work, but instead she was drawing. It was a face, one Sam had never seen before, of a kind man with laughing, sad eyes. Kind of like Gram.

"Who's that?" Sam asked.

Gram looked up, startled. "Oh! Oh, just no one." She looked back down at the picture with an expression that told Sam it definitely wasn't just no one.

"Was he a crush?" she asked.

Gram laughed. "No! Oh, goodness, no. He's just..." she paused, surveying Sam as if wondering if she were a friend, then leaned in conspiratorially, "have you ever had an imaginary friend?"

Sam nodded. "Kind of."

Leaning back, Gram smiled. "He's my imaginary friend, I guess. You know how your Mum said my head hurts sometimes? Whenever it does, there are sometimes random snips of imagination that flash through it, so fast – and he's in most of them."

"So you draw him?"

She nodded. "I sometimes wonder if I could just get him out of my brain entirely, I could stop having the headaches. I think I'd miss him, though."

"Do you have more pictures?" Sam asked, curious.

Gram looked amused and pulled out a sketchbook from a pile of books on the desk, then came to sit next to Sam. "Plenty, Samantha."

"I like Sam."

"Why not Samantha?" Gram asked, surprised. "It's such a pretty name. Like something out of a fairytale."

Sam shrugged, feeling a bit proud of her full name all of a sudden.

They flipped through the album together. There were giant wasps and Agatha Christie - "Isn't that in one of her novels?" Sam asked, and Gram nodded – and a funny looking man in a spacesuit. He had a head that looked like a potato, and Sam giggled. There was Mt. Vesuvius, which had Sam knew had exploded.

And then she noticed the box. She pointed at it. "What's that, Gram?"

Gram looked at the box and shrugged. "It's a box, really. It's in a lot of the imaginations, too. I looked it up – apparently it's a type of police box that was used in the 1960's. Though what it's doing in ancient history I can't imagine. I must have seen one somewhere."

Sam looked up at Gram. "I know where you've seen it. Around me. You've seen it around me."

Gram gave her an odd expression. "Around you?"

"Yes. It follows me to school. And sometimes it sits in the yard at night. I see it when I get up to use the bathroom. You've seen it around me – maybe when I was a baby." Sam paused. "Mum and Da say I'm not to talk about it."

"They say I'm not to talk about him, either," Gram said, nodding to the man on the page. He was wearing a trench-coat, his hands in his pockets, surveying the ruins of Vesuvius with a mournful sort of look that matched Gram's sad eyes. "But he's in my head, everywhere I -"

Suddenly she cut off and clutched her head, breathing hard. "Why – there's – DOCTOR!" she gasped, then suddenly stopped and leaned back.

"Doctor?" Sam asked, alarmed. "Should I call one?"

Gram shook her head, still breathing hard. "Why?"

"You called for one," Sam said, confused now.

"Did I?" Gram was confused too.

"Unless..." Sam paused and looked down. "Unless that's him, whoever he is." He looked doctor-y, there in his trench-coat. "The Doctor."

"We're a pair, aren't we?" Gram said, leaning her head back on the couch and chuckling. "Though it would make a good book. _The Doctor and the Police Box._"

Sam nodded, murmuring the title to herself. "_The Doctor and the Police Box._"

That was the last time Sam had talked about the box, because Mum and Da had been around too much on the next couple of days, talking to Gram about where things should go when she moved and what they should do with such-and-such. Da always had a notebook he was calculating things in, and Gram had a tired, patient look that she sometimes shot Sam around his shoulder when he was doing sums that made Sam think she didn't like maths either.

And then they left, and Sam didn't talk about the box any more, except when she got home she found the picture of the Doctor and her Police Box at Mount Vesuvius tucked into her suitcase, and she knew Gram hadn't forgotten.

Gram lasted longer than anyone had expected. Sam sometimes wondered if their talk had helped the headaches go away for a while; as if she'd gotten some of the Doctor out of her brain. Sam was through high school and starting Uni when she got the news. The Police Box had taken to parking just outside, against the wall as if it were your everyday phone box instead of a blue one.

"She never went to a home," an old lady sniffled on the grass at the head of the grave. "She was independent till the end, was Donna. Sweetest heart, though I'm telling you, she could give you a talking-to like no other, she could. That was Donna." She sniffled.

Sam couldn't take it much longer. Three old folks had spoken so far, and it seemed like most of Gram's friends were planning on it, too; but they all said the same thing. Sweet lady, could give you a row if you wanted it, and a bunch of other blather. None of it was the Gram Sam had met, and so she'd stopped listening a while before.

Now she just surveyed the graveyard. It was pretty, a nice place, but she wondered what Gram would have thought of it. Probably not interesting enough.

And then a flash of blue made her blink. Her eyes widened as she saw a Police Box parked in the corner near the hedge. It was her police box, she was sure of it – and she hadn't seen it the last time she'd looked at that corner of the graveyard. She scanned the graveyard more carefully now, wondering why it was here, except that she was there. It was hard to do, since she tried to do it slowly instead of just letting her head whip back and forth during the funeral.

He blended in rather well with the hedge. It had already lost its leaves, with it being late fall, and his tweed jacket was about the same colour. He was pretending to look at the grave in front of him, but she was certain he'd been looking at her a moment before – and then he glanced up, and his eyes caught hers and fell again hurriedly. And she noticed – absurdly – he was wearing a bow tie.

More importantly, he had his hands in his pockets, in a particular way she recognized. And an old phrase she hadn't thought of in years popped into her head.

_The Doctor and the Police Box._

She mulled over it later as she helped Mum and Da pack up Gram's old stuff. To her surprise, she'd been left the drawings and sketchbooks, which didn't stop her imagination, as she packed and looked through the doodles of places she couldn't recognize, faces she didn't know.

"Bunch of junk, if you ask me," Da said, and Sam looked up to find her father standing in the doorway, arms folded. "Silly to keep those books, they've got nothing in them that's worthwhile."

"It was worthwhile to her," Sam said simply, and continued packing. Da shrugged and left. She pulled out one last sketchbook from the bookshelf and opened it, flipping through it as she had the others, thinking lazily to herself as she did. Gram had been right. The Doctor was in almost every picture.

And so was the Police Box.

What if the two were connected?  
The thought made her almost jump. It made so much sense she wondered why she hadn't thought of it before. They were always together in the pictures... and though she'd never seen the Doctor around her Police Box...

But had she?

She got up quickly and rummaged around in her purse. She'd brought it with her, just because. It felt right, with Gram dying, to bring back the only memory she had of her... the picture of Mount Vesuvius. And there he was, standing with his hands in his pockets, with the Police Box behind him.

It wasn't the same face. It didn't make sense. But it was him – it had to have been him – it was the same way of putting his hands in his pockets, the same sad look, the same Police Box.

And everywhere Sam went, the box followed.

It frightened her, that thought. She put it out of her head. It was absurd, she was _not_ getting followed by Gram's imaginary friend. Nor her imaginary blue box. It was ridiculous. She would not bother with it.

Still, she found herself taking long, rambling routes through campus so as to avoid the wall that the Police Box parked against. And sometimes, when she heard the strange noise that had always woken her as a child to find the box parked outside her window, she'd close the blinds, even if it was midday and the sun was nice.

It was her third year of Uni, and she'd gotten a flat. It was her first flat; up till then she'd been in the dorms, but now she could afford to share with a flatmate, a sweet girl named Katie who was normally quiet and in a corner with homework.

So it was rather surprising when she came home to find a note taped on the door, and Katie's car gone. She took off the note and went into the kitchen to read it.

"Sam-

Going on holiday for the weekend. Sorry it's short notice but Ben invited me because a friend dropped out. Also please get that box out of my room! It's taking up all the space, and it's my room anyway.

-Kate"

Dropping her bags on the counter, Sam ran to Katie's room. She hadn't left a box there, which meant it had to be -

"Oh, hello!" The man whirled as she came in to face her. His limbs seemed splayed all over the place, as if he were made of rubber or hadn't quite gotten used to a brand new set of arms and legs. She noticed that he had the bow tie and jacket still, and a massively wavy head of hair. And a tampon in one hand. He noticed her looking at it. "Sorry, I was just trying to figure out what this thing is supposed to do. I've got a box of them in the – well, a whole box of them indoors. I think they got left by somebody. Anyway, are they important, because I don't know what to do with them and whether or not I should return them or throw them out." It was all spoken so quickly she barely took it in – this mad man in his bow tie in her flatmate's room with a tampon in one hand and a blue box behind him – _her_ blue box, her Police Box, and it was all absurd.

"I'm having a bad dream, and now I'm going to wake up and go back to the kitchen and have a cup of tea," she said calmly.

"Oh, no dream, but tea might help. I'll make it," and then he was brushing past her. "I'm the -"

"Doctor," she said dreamily as she followed. It didn't matter at all, after all, it was just a dream. "You're the Doctor, and that's a Police Box."

"Well, sort of," he said as he whirled round the kitchen, flinging open cupboards. "It _looks_ like a Police Box. But it's actually my time machine. Space machine. Time and Space machine. Space ship."

This caught Sam's attention. "Space ship?"  
"Yes. It travels in space. And time. The TARDIS, I call it. Time And Relative Dimensions in Space. My gra- well, an old mate of mine made it up."

"I see." Sam said nothing more until her tea had been set in front of her, and she picked up the mug and took a long draught of it before asking, "Why has it been following me? I see it everywhere. Wherever I go."

The Doctor looked a bit puzzled. "I've only checked in on you once or twice." Then his face cleared. "But it's a time machine, you see, so I've probably just been dropping by in the future."

"You're dropping by in the future... now," Sam said, testing the idea.

"Well, it's all a bit... timey-wimey. Anyway, have you got any biscuits? I _need_ a biscuit. And some custard. Have you got any fish fingers?"

"No, but there's some ham in the fridge."

He shook his head. "No, no, no, that won't do. I'll just have the biscuits. By the way, you haven't introduced yourself."

"But you already know my name, don't you?" Sam asked.

A look she couldn't fathom came into his eyes, and then he nodded. "Yes, but all the same it's only right if you say it. So you are...?"

"Samantha," she said, remembering Gram saying it was like a fairy tale. "I'm Samantha."

"Nice to meet you, Samantha. Good name, Samantha. Like something out of a -"

"-Fairy tale," they both said together, and locked eyes for a moment as Sam tried to pry into his mind, try to understand this enigma that had landed in her flat.

She stopped trying after a few seconds, taking another sip of her tea and saying, "You've got to get your TARDIS out of my flatmate's room, though, she's not very happy about having all her floorspace taken up by a big blue box that she thinks I put there."

"Sorry, I tried to get it in the kitchen, but the calibration's a bit wonky these days. I'll have to drop by Cardiff and give her a reboot."  
"Cardiff?"

"Yes, why?"

"Gram lived in Cardiff."

His face grew sober. "Of course she did – couldn't help it, probably, with her – never mind. Want a biscuit?"

She stared at the biscuit he offered right in front of her face, then leaned forward determinedly and bit his hand.

"OW!" he yelped, dropping the biscuit, whipping his hand away and jumping about three feet across the kitchen. "What did you do that for?"

He was real.

Sam stood up. "Why are you here?" she asked, almost angrily. "Why are you following me, and what did you do to my Gram?"

The Doctor looked up from wringing his bit hand and sighed. "Would you like to come for a ride?"

"What?" she looked at him incredulously.

"That's what I came for. To find out if you'd like a ride."

"In your time machine."

"Yes."  
"And you just happened to fancy it of a moment? 'I'm a bit bored, I guess I should drop in on a girl I don't know and invite her on a ride in my time machine?'"

To her surprise, he grinned. "Oh, you are like your Gram, that's true enough. And the answer is – yes, yes I did just happen to fancy it for a bit. Now come on – Samantha Noble."

"I'm not a Noble, I'm a Peters."

"You're not a Peters, there's not a bit of your Dad in you, you're a Noble all through. So come on, Samantha Noble, we're going for a ride!"

And he grabbed her hand, and suddenly they were running down the hall to Katie's room, and Sam found she didn't mind.


End file.
